Ontario’s Greenbelt includes two million acres of protected land including farmland, forests, wetlands, rivers, and lakes. Photo courtesy Ontario Farmland Trust. Now that the head-shaking over Ontario’s Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, has settled, one thing is widely agreed: the only possible beneficiaries are real estate developers.
Continue readingAuthor: Ken Grafton
Canadian Dimension: ‘Consultocracy’ and the Not-So-New Public Management Paradigm
The Deloitte office in Toronto, 181 Bay Street. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. New Public Management (NPM) is a term first coined by Oxford University Professor Christopher Hood in a 1991 article entitled “A Public Management for All Seasons?”, which described a then developing neoliberal paradigm in public administration focused upon
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: COVID-19: Why we need a rethink on population density and disease
The threat of coronavirus, currently inspiring mass hysteria around the globe, focuses attention upon the role of population density in disease transmission. The World Health Organization (WHO) may be the single greatest threat to human survival. Its mission to promote health around the world encourages population growth in a reality
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Fear and Loathing on the Conservative Leadership Trail
Former Canadian Minister of National Defence, Peter MacKay, and US Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta, left, chat informally before sitting down for a meeting in the Pentagon on Sept. 28, 2012. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Polonius would likely have approved of former Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay’s recent tweet
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: SNC-Lavalin, Justin Trudeau and ‘banana republic’ politics
Justin Trudeau delivers a speech on February 28, 2019. Photo by Christinne Muschi/Reuters. Commenting upon the prime minister’s response to the Ethics Commissioner’s report on political interference in the so-called ‘Lavalin-Gate Affair’, former NDP Leader Tom Mulcair characterized Justin Trudeau’s actions as “banana republic behaviour.” Perhaps not the most politically
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Is representative democracy actually democratic?
“If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.” – Mark Twain In its origin, democracy was participatory. The ancient Greeks defined democracy (dēmokratía) as “rule of the people”. A participatory democracy is one in which every eligible citizen is permitted a say and a vote on every
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Breach of trust, not contract: Why politicians are allowed to lie
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson shakes hands with Justin Trudeau. Photo from the official photostream of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Flickr). “How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” It’s an old joke, but exactly why do politicians lie so often? The
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